Ikea Timmons, 19, had her first and last appointment Monday at the Center for Women and Children in Jacksonville. The clinic is among three in the area that are closing.

Three public health clinics in Jacksonville plan to stop treating adults after today, forcing more than 6,000 patients, including many pregnant women, to seek care elsewhere.

The cuts are aimed at defraying a $2.8 million drop in the Duval County Health Department’s health care services budget this year, said Tim Lawther, the department’s assistant director. He attributed the decrease to a reduction in state spending on health care and the demise of a $1 million grant that sought to expand the county’s primary-care options.

At the West Jacksonville Family Health Center on King Street, adult primary care will no longer be an option as of Wednesday. Women’s health services, which include prenatal care, are being eliminated at the Marietta Health Center on West Beaver Street and the Center for Women and Children on West Sixth Street.

Children’s health services will remain untouched.

Health Department officials say they are working to reassign affected patients to other locations. The department sent letters to every patient who had an appointment at one of the clinics over the past six weeks, notifying them of the change.

But some will almost certainly find themselves turning to charity-care organizations or choosing to go without care because of the inconvenience, officials say.

“The honest reality is that services will be reduced for the uninsured population at the Health Department,” Lawther said.

Not making ends meet

The Health Department targeted adult primary care — the stuff of annual physicals, blood-pressure checks and cholesterol screenings — because the service fails to recoup its expenses, Lawther said.

Medicaid, the state and federal insurance program for the poor, often is counted on to keep public health programs afloat. But there were too many patients who didn’t qualify, particularly men and women who weren’t pregnant.

“Unfortunately, it’s a time right now with the economic downturn that the people in need is increasing and the dollars available to serve that need are decreasing,” Lawther said.

It also comes at a bad time in the region’s efforts to reduce its high infant-mortality rate, said Carol Brady, executive director of the Northeast Florida Healthy Start Coalition, an advocate for prenatal care. A recent Jacksonville Community Council Inc. study showed Jacksonville’s rate was worst in the state and on par with some developing nations.

Even though the rate has improved a little over the past several years, Brady worries that any cutback in women’s services, particularly among the Medicaid and uninsured populations, will reverse that progress.

“Budget cuts have consequences,” she said. “This is not good.”

Lawther said he hopes to offset some cuts by adding women’s services and family planning to the Agape Community Health Center on Edgewood Avenue West.

Sue Nussbaum, executive director of the nonprofit We Care clinic network, said her charity has witnessed a surge in calls lately from people looking for primary care. The Health Department cuts are “really stressing the whole system,” she said.

The three clinics join a growing list of providers specializing in care for Northeast Florida’s poor that have cut services or shutdown lately. The University of Florida’s dental clinic next to Shands Jacksonville closed in June. A year and a half before that, the Health Department closed The Bridge Adolescent Health Center.

Ikea Timmons, a 19-year-old nursing student, had her first prenatal appointment Monday at the Center for Women and Children.

“I heard they had the best service,” she said of the clinic.

Her reaction to the change in service offers a ray of hope to Health Department’s administrators. She’ll be fine wherever her next appointment is, she said, as long as it’s at a clinic run by the department or at one suggested by it.

Something like this is good news to me. Why must we subsidize ignorance, stupidity, laziness, poor judgement and allow people with those traits to thrive. A little social Darwinism is in order, and then hopefully the number of these people could start to dwindle.

I wonder if these clinic closings and the dental clinic closing are related to the the "implosion" the former head UF spoke of in his emails regarding management of the UF system of medical services? Corruption seemed to be his biggest concern (trying to clean it up at UF) prior to his departure. UF let him go and paid him off to keep his mouth shut. Probably was trying to be a stand up guy. Read about him on Google and Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_C._Kone